By Wang Ying (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-10-15 07:17

Agricultural researchers have launched a research and development project for hybrid plants they hope will yield more crops in a shorter period of time.

The research project is aimed at revealing why hybrid crops have advantages over other types, Sun Qixin, the project's lead scientist and the vice-president of China Agricultural University, said.

"If our project is successful, China's grain output could increase by 5 billion kg a year, which is equal to 1 percent of the country's present annual food output," Sun said yesterday.

The Science and Technology Ministry has earmarked 30 million yuan ($4 million) for the five-year research project.

Some hybrid crops are more fit than their parents. For example, the hybrid rice developed in the early 1970s by Yuan Longping, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, boosted the country's rice output over the ensuing 25 years by a combined 400 million tons. That is equal to the country's entire food production during a single average year in the 1980s.

"But why are they better? This is a world problem that has never been tackled," Sun said. "Our research is aiming to find the answer."

Yuan, "the father of hybrid rice", spent a dozen years carrying out about 1,000 tests on parent crops before he found a special high-yield hybrid.

"Our research is expected to find the gene mechanism that will help us shorten the test period. We might need only 100 or even 10 tests to find the right one," Sun said.

Sun and his team have applied the results of their research to trial productions of rice in Hubei and Hunan provinces and corn in Shandong and Henan provinces. They have also researched hybrid rapeseed and wheat.

"Our study is expected to boost hybrid rice production by 20 percent," he said.

This would be a major accomplishment as the amount of arable land in the country has been decreasing while demand for food has been increasing.

By the end of last year, the country had 1.83 billion mu (122 million hectares) of arable land, 4.6 million mu less than a year earlier, according to figures from the Ministry of Land and Resources.

Most of the lost land went to construction, natural disasters and reforestation.

"How to increase crops yields is critical, and high-tech input will play a key role in ensuring the country's grain security," Science and Technology Minister Wan Gang said earlier this year.

A companion to the National High-Tech Research and Development Program, the hybrid crops research project launched 73 programs late last month, covering agriculture, energy, information, resources, health, materials, inter-disciplinary studies and new science frontiers.